


Dead Living

by sarahofcroydon



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, Hideo Kojima, M/M, Sexual Themes, Swearing, Violence, cyborg, metal gear solid - Freeform, mgs, mgs2, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:53:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahofcroydon/pseuds/sarahofcroydon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after MGS2. Raiden can't adjust.</p><p>An exploration into his headspace - violence, guilt, war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Living

He rolls off of her body yet again and the litany isn’t far behind in following him; _it’s ok, Jack, what’s wrong, Jack, are you ok, don’t worry about it, it’s fine, talk to me, Jack, what are you thinking, it’s ok, Jack, it’s ok_  
  
It’s not ok.  
  
The sound of the door slamming after him is an echo of his rage, and he stalks out into the night, onto the city streets, shoulders shrugged into his jacket against the cold.  
  
He doesn’t know where he’s going, just that he had to go, walk, run, move to escape his own mind. Now, like in bed, he can’t see Rose but for his own simmering anger, his latent frustration, the breath-suspending fear that he won’t be gazing into beautiful eyes and red lips but sockets of bone and a skeletal jaw set in a leering grin.  
  
No one on the dirty streets returns his gaze.  
  
Rose just barely returns it, as of late.  
  
Since they were reunited, it’s happened every time they’ve tried it. He wants to make love to her, he just wants his old girlfriend back, his old life. Every time though, every time after he’s tricked himself into thinking she’s the Rose he always knew, his sweet Rose, just his girl, it’s like whiplash striking or the tide pulling out his feet and he just can’t do it.  
He won’t let himself be tricked anymore.  
  
It was such a damned relief to see these streets again. Seeing normal people going about their normal business felt like the cool air on his skin after peeling off his suit- deep, soul-twisting relief. He didn’t know how heavy his heart could feel with it, how happy he was to think that maybe… just maybe… he wasn’t mad. His thoughts felt like his own, his desires not the function of an omnipotent artificial intelligence but from his own core and soul, his own memories, memories that could only be his own, _unless, maybe... no…_  
  
  
It was so easy to love Rose in that moment, reuniting where they first met.  
The emotion welling in his chest was his own, wasn’t it? Didn’t that make it genuine? Hadn’t Snake said that made it real? Yet, when he’d taken her to bed that night, it felt like the worst of the lies he’d let himself believe and his heart was twisting itself into an aching ball of paranoia yet again.  
She looked different. She blinked more often. Her hands reached out to him, but she seemed to hunch in on herself, hesitant, glancing at him… and he couldn’t do it. He didn’t know this person. He’d never known this person, this woman, this… spy.  
She had been his foil, the proof to himself that he could enact a normal life, yet all along she had been another agent to his fear.  
  
  
He was furious. Terrified. If he couldn’t even get Rose right, what kind of person was he? He was so unstable that even his girlfriend had to be modified to suit his tastes, and what tastes were those? Bickering, arguing, he’d even hit her, once. Why would anyone want to come back to that? He was a monster. Was she still a spy? Did he imagine that she was a spy? Was that, too, a sick product of his confused, altered brain? Or was he meant to revert to doubt and blame and fear, too preoccupied to notice a broader scheme, something greater and more sinister than the small confines of his tormented mind?  
  
He looks hard at the people passing him on the street. Shady, scuttling and skulking by… he wishes someone would return his stare and engage with him. He wants to hit someone, feel the thrill of the blow and sharp, wakening pain. Shame burns through him as his conscience contemplates the innocence of the passers by, while his frustration bubbles beneath his skin. Are they actors too? Will they be acted on? Criminals, pimps, shadowy figures of the night… if even his beloved Rose can act as a servant to the Patriots, then maybe they all deserve eachother.  
He doesn’t care. He hates them all.  
  
  
Anyone who barters with intimacy deserves to have their own intimacy corrupted, controlled, their lives taken over by that which they deal with.  
  
A cold chill runs through him, not a symptom of the night air but the realisation that he, too, has gotten what he gave to the world.  
  
He thinks of Snake, but tries to dismiss the man from his thoughts. After all, it’s Snake’s fault that he was made to remember what he was.  
  
  
  
It’s auto-suggestion; he remembers. He can feel his hands shaking, but not from the cold. He shakes from the sheer offensiveness of his memories, sick injustice and thick-tongued fear. Rose isn’t there to stop his mind consuming itself anymore – Jack, Jack, listen to me Jack, and he falls victim to himself, fulfils his own damning prophecy.  
  
He wants to hurt someone. That’s what he was taught to do. Childish doubt and rage have him stalking the streets like a deranged predator, chasing the fearful thirst of his childhood self. It’s the only thing that makes him feel himself- doubt isn’t allowed to come into play, only the raw, brutal feeling that truly brings his body to life. Aggression and fear, the relentless pushing past it to exist, to subsist, to survive.  
  
  
 _“Everything you felt belonged to you,”_ Snake had said, _“Live. Choose how you want to live.”_  
  
This is the only way he knows how.  
  
  
There’s something about neon that makes these alleyways seem darker. He feels invisible, crackling like electricity, all unseen potential. Being unseen has become so familiar that his heart jumps into his throat when he’s knocked to the side, jostled by another body and shaken from his thoughts. He glances into cruel eyes and can’t feel his fingers.  
  
“Sorry, faggot. Didn’t see you there.”  
  
Some punk. Out with his men, out for trouble.  
  
“Out by yourself, huh? Looking to take it for some sleazy fucker? Don’t know any other reason a guy’d be out alone in this dump.”  
  
Words don’t come. His throat feels thick, palms sweaty. This guy hasn’t got a clue how dangerous he is.  
  
  
“Stay back.” __  
Don’t mess with me. For fuck’s sake, don’t mess with me.  
  
  
The punk doesn’t recognise the tense energy of the final vestiges of his restraint, steps closer, pushes his shoulder, shoves him. Not a punk, a civilian… and that stops him breathing, makes him choke the most. It’s the line a soldier never crosses, the binary of good and evil that is programmed into his mind. It’s not the loss of his self-control, but the degradation of his role that chills him, that he would turn against the people he serves, the people he protects. It’s errant, it’s wild and snarling aberration, it twists in his gut like the churning tide.  
  
“Scared? Dropping to your knees, are you, maggot?”  
 __  
Stand to attention, maggots! Harden the fuck up, march on three!  
  
It makes him realise he’s still _that fucking subservient.  
_  
  
 _Not any more,_ as his fist connects with the punk’s jaw, the resounding crack sickening and satisfying. _Not any more, not any more_. He can’t be that person. He won’t obey the impulses trained into him, he won’t do anything his childhood soldier did _(then why is he punching and kicking and clawing in red fury?)_ Wrapped up in his rage, punching again and again, spiralling out of his senses... his vision is blurred, he can’t see anymore, it’s wrong, it feels _right_ , and just when he feels he’s seizing thrilling reality again his wrist is caught from behind, a thin, strong hand squeezing his bones together.  
  
He turns, and there’s no auto-focus for his blurry eyes, nothing to accompany the raw stimulus that tells him _this man shouldn’t be here, enemy, alert._  
Vamp catches his other wrist, and he is thrust into his nightmare.  
  
The vampire’s intervention has the punks fleeing, one stumbling with his hands clutching his side. Not punks, _civilians_ , and oh god, there were no civilians in the S3 experiment, so why are they here now, with Vamp? He can’t give credence to mythical creatures, not to men who suck blood and come back from the dead.  
 __  
Your feelings were real, Snake had said, and he feels like he wants to laugh right now. Feelings. He feels like laughing and crying and killing and fucking hitting something, tearing it to shreds. He’s back in the game right now, all stimulus and fiction… right? Then why is his panic so raw, why can’t he see, why does the scent of the other man invade his senses so unrelentingly, like the scent of the street, food, fumes, filth?  
  
  
“What’s this about, young one?” The low voice makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise and shiver. “That’s not the way you should treat new acquaintances.”  
  
“Let me go,” He breathes, standing tremulously still, his pulse hammering against Vamp’s skin. He’s ready to move at a moment’s opportunity and Vamp can sense it too, expressed in a deep chuckle.  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
  
No armour, no weapons. He could die, here in the street. It’s like he’s naked and alone again, short on breath and sanity and it feels like elation.  
  
“What do you want?” He tenses, almost blinded by the blood pounding in his eyes.  
  
“I should ask you the same,” Vamp murmurs close to his ear, close enough to feel his breath. “Your battle is over. Or is it that you don’t want it to stop?”  
  
  
He twists suddenly, trying to shrug Vamp off. Vamp’s grip is unrelenting and he slams them back into a wall, struggling and flailing. He uses his legs and elbows, yet his opponent anticipates everything and roughly twists his arms behind his back. Vamp has him off balance and he feels his body thrown around, cheek pressing hard against a cold brick wall. It scratches blood from his skin and he gasps loudly- it stings. He wants it to hurt more.  
  
“Where is my Queen,” Vamp says, tone short and oddly raw. He doesn’t answer and is shoved into the wall again, red smearing across his face.  
“What happened to my Queen?”  
  
“Dead,” He snarls, and Vamp’s momentary pause is enough for him to twist backwards and around, but only that- the back of his head collides with the wall as Vamp puts fingers of steel to his throat. The flash in Vamp’s eyes makes him want to laugh, and he chokes out his words against the pressure on his windpipe.  
  
“Shot in the heart. She got herself killed saving us. Saving _us_ …”  
Laughter bubbles in his throat again- laughter or a wail, he’s not sure. The sounds from his throat are distorted and choked as his hands fly to meet Vamp’s, to stop the pressure increasing around his neck. His breath hitches in his throat as Vamp leans forward to lick the blood from his cheek, his eyes as black as the sky.  
  
“I have nothing, then,” Vamp says, a slow drawl that rolls the sound in his mouth along with the taste of blood. “Back to nothing. I should be the one prowling like a hungry mutt. Why aren’t you tending to your queen?”  
  
“I don’t have a queen,” Raiden growls, the anger and ecstasy from before washing back into his body, and he knees Vamp in the gut. His neck is freed as the man stumbles, and he chases it up with another blow, a kick. He doesn’t have a queen. He doesn’t have anything, just lies and tricks and the visceral thrill of flirting with death. It’s only now that he feels real, paradoxically… everything of his life, his apartment, his clothes, his girlfriend… it seems like simulacra compared to this. His pulse is real, his sweat-slicked fist, not the feeling of acting at reality, trying and failing to convince himself he could live like a normal man. Just this- knuckles and bone, flesh and blood, the raw feeling of air forced from his lungs as he’s socked in the stomach, adrenaline as he tears at another man’s flesh with his hands.  
  
  
“Did you want to die instead,” Vamp sneers, and Raiden yanks his head back with a fist in his hair. He’s thirsty for it, desperate for something, validation. How sick is he, that he’s this excited to have a body he can tear into with all his might, revelling in the hard physicality of it, of someone who will hurt him back just as hard? He’s unrelenting, dragging Vamp backwards by his hair, stumbling like a madman, and his enraged charge is only stopped with the violent feeling of a hand clapping against his crotch, like the president of the United States did a myriad of hours ago.  
  
  
And it feels _glorious._  
  
  
He barely realises his dick is hard with it. Vamp’s eyes flash, and he squeezes painfully, and Raiden is struggling to make him stop, clawing at his shoulders, booted feet scrabbling for purchase on the ground, hips thrusting to make Vamp do something, touch him more, make it hurt, make it a thrill. His struggle is a blur, it’s all about feeling now, exquisite pleasure and pain, that goddamned rush… he’s lost himself in it. Pure immediacy, pure delight. He grunts, and breathes through his mouth, and sniffs to shuck up mucous through his nose, runny in the cold night air. He thrusts his hips, he doesn’t know what he wants, he wants everything…  
  
  
And Vamp shoves him, takes a step backwards, leaves him feeling suddenly cold and dazed.  
  
“You’re a child,” Vamp says, not a sneer, just a statement. “You’re still a child.”  
  
Raiden doesn’t see him disappear into the night.  
  
  
  
  
It takes a long time to make it back to his apartment. He feels high, dislocated from his own mind, and his eyes can’t deal with the fluorescent light flooding the stairwell to the door. It’s too stark, too brutally honest.  
  
The light is on in his room. Her room. The bedroom.  
  
 _“Jack? Jack, is that you?”_  
  
Jack isn’t sure.


End file.
